I get that I'm not supposed to put in that effort, but it's WORDS and icons MEAN things and if I'm not getting it, there's all this pondering of what I could be missing.
What bothers me with this approach I guess is how much that sounds like you'd be frowning on any icon that would use text, tiny or not but undecipherable to you, as a visual effect.
What about icons in German? French? Chinese? Japanese? Italian? What about private jokes, yes, and every single icon you will never get because there will be something in there that will just not be meant for anybody but the people who can decipher the language or the visual prompt? What about icons like the one you yourself are using in answer to Mary? (I can't read it, I'm sorry, what does it say?)Words have meaning, yes, but they also have aesthetic qualities. I've been known to buy books in languages I can't for the life of me understand (Bought the first foreign book in Sicily and I don't speak Italian) just for the beauty of the written word, not its meaning.
I understand why one wouldn't like tiny text aesthetically, I do (tastes--thank goodness--vary from one person to another, so like I said before, to each their own), but the reasons you're listing to explain your dislike make it sound like you would frown upon any icon that would use a prompt you don't get, and that sounds... well, elitist I guess, lol. To me, words have aesthetic qualities beyond their meaning, and I guess it's also what others who use tiny text or Chinese characters or any other kind of text as a visual element think. I know that visually, I will like a pretty icon better even if there's some text on it I don't get (either because it's tiny or cryptic) than an icon with so much text that it's pasted on the image in a way that will take away most of the aesthetic quality of the icon in the first place.
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Date: November 15th, 2005 12:56 pm (UTC)What bothers me with this approach I guess is how much that sounds like you'd be frowning on any icon that would use text, tiny or not but undecipherable to you, as a visual effect.
What about icons in German? French? Chinese? Japanese? Italian? What about private jokes, yes, and every single icon you will never get because there will be something in there that will just not be meant for anybody but the people who can decipher the language or the visual prompt? What about icons like the one you yourself are using in answer to Mary? (I can't read it, I'm sorry, what does it say?)Words have meaning, yes, but they also have aesthetic qualities. I've been known to buy books in languages I can't for the life of me understand (Bought the first foreign book in Sicily and I don't speak Italian) just for the beauty of the written word, not its meaning.
I understand why one wouldn't like tiny text aesthetically, I do (tastes--thank goodness--vary from one person to another, so like I said before, to each their own), but the reasons you're listing to explain your dislike make it sound like you would frown upon any icon that would use a prompt you don't get, and that sounds... well, elitist I guess, lol. To me, words have aesthetic qualities beyond their meaning, and I guess it's also what others who use tiny text or Chinese characters or any other kind of text as a visual element think. I know that visually, I will like a pretty icon better even if there's some text on it I don't get (either because it's tiny or cryptic) than an icon with so much text that it's pasted on the image in a way that will take away most of the aesthetic quality of the icon in the first place.